Buck's Family
by Barrett's Privateer
Summary: My take on the Dinoco helicopter, for whatever it's worth. Does this big guy, who remained in the background in the movie and never said a word, have an identity, a home, a life, a family? Find out.


AUTHOR'S NOTE: Just wondering about that big blue Dinoco chopper with their race team, and wondering who he is, what his name is, and does he have a life? I meditated for a bit, and details started filtering to me of "Buck" and about his morning with his family before the race. Sorry, it's a bit angsty.

DISCLAIMER: All characters and liknesses seen in the film "Cars" are the property of Disney/Pixar. The identity and history I have constructed for the Sikorsky family, however, are mine.

The alarm went off at 6:45, with a blast of raucous music and chatter from the WCAR morning zoo show. Ryan "Buck" Sikorsky (no one but his late wife had called him "Ryan") stirred his sizable, company-blue bulk as he moved into consciousness upon his sleeping pallet, with a wave of motion that started in the core of him and reverberated all the way out through his tail boom and the tips of his folded rotor blades. This was followed by a massive yawn and stretch before Buck rolled up and extended his undercarriage in a single, suprisingly fluid motion. He blinked at the light streaming through the venetian blinds along the east wall of his room, a chamber of spartan accoutrements which echoed his Army days - he had never felt the need for frills in his life.

Finally standing, Buck shook himself like a gigantic dog and surveyed himself in the mirror which was almost the room's sole concession to being a part of a upscale residence in Stratos City and not an airport hangar. He checked himself over – the same big blue helo, minus the Dinoco graphics, which were cut from vinyl film, applied on-site before work and removed before he went home. Who wanted to be a corporate symbol ALL the time? The radio was still blasting the wacky antics of Lenny Cherokee and Kyle "The Smile" Hatchbacker. Their prank calls, for example, were infamous. However, Buck was not in the mood for any of it this morning.

"Off!" he barked, and the household computer network switched it off for him. With another yawn, he nosed his way past the door-flap of the master chamber and glided off towards the wash stall. Only after a hot wash and wax would he begin to feel like a civilized person.

If this was like other mornings, Buck would have slept in a little and his daughters would have beaten him to it. But, this being the morning of the Piston Cup tiebreaker race, he had quite a ways to travel from his Utah residence to California. He would be needed on site by noon at the earliest. Cars, of course, would roll their eyes and ask about the long commute, but Buck was unpreturbed. The advantage of being a helicopter was getting to sleep in one's own bed at least three-quarters of the year.

As Buck passed his daughter's rooms, he could hear seventeen-year-old Leslie and thirteen-year-old Theresa beginning to stir. He considered himself lucky that he didn't have to almost drag them out of bed in the morning, even on school days. In Leslie's room, there were faint strains of a power ballad coming from her stereo. Theresa's favorite industrial band started up a few seconds after, always a bit on the "too loud" side. By now, Buck's brain had mastered the fine art of sensory gating, muting the obnoxious noise from his awareness. Once inside the wash stall, he nosed the control keys in front to hose him down with hot water, and then a wash-rinse-wax cycle which finally chased the last of the night's cobwebs out of his head.

As the stall's blowers vented out the steam, Buck emerged to find his girls waiting in the corridor, blinking sleep out of their eyes. Leslie, at seventeen, was almost her father's match in stature, but with a touch more refinement in the face and lighter, slanted eyes that now and then struck him as being vaguely lupine. Yet, those eyes were bright with good humour and that chiselled face could also manifest affable dimples. Her streamlined airframe was painted in a deep, irridescent sea-green which gradually lightened towards her belly - she had specified that herself. As did her father, she kept her rotor blades neatly folded towards her tail when inside the confines of the house. 

"'Morning, Dad. " Leslie dipped her head towards her elder. Her voice was maturing into a pleasant, mellifluous _alto_. The tone and nuances of her speech were becoming so much like her mother's. Janice would have been proud to see her now.

"Hi Sweetheart." Buck grinned, and it was always genuine with his children. "I didn't think you two would be up so early."

"I have to go take my SATs today, remember?" Leslie edged towards the wash stall as her father moved aside. "They're doing it in Provo at 10:00. Gotta get a move on." With that, she disappeared into the steam.

Buck was left with Daughter #2, Theresa. She was smaller and finer in build than Leslie or her father, and not likely to get much larger; all the JetRanger in their family tree seemed to emerge in her.

Theresa still had her juvenile colour scheme of navy blue and cream, though she had made efforts to dress it up with pearlescent Ultra-Sheen tints in punkish hues of purple and yellow. Being smaller, she could afford to be a bit more lackadaisical with her rotors, letting the blades splay in a 30-degree spread from the hub. Her tea-dark eyes darted towards her sister, and then her father, and narrowed at the Dinoco livery of her sire. Theresa was going through an "environmentally aware" phase and found it difficult to conceal her disdain for "the big oil companies", even though it was just such an enterprise that enabled her father to keep a roof over all their heads.

"Dad." Theresa's greeting seemed more like a sigh. She was long past "Daddy".

"'Lo, Theresa." For now, Buck was resigned to the young girl's "eco-nut" stage. At least she knew better than to snark on it openly.

"Why are you up so early today? It's Saturday."

"Well, why are you up, Dad?"

"Race today."

"Oh yeah... THAT race. Everyone and their dog is talking about it at school. Did they find that McQueen guy yet?"

"They did," Buck shrugged, "In some little town in Arizona, can't recall the name of the place."

"It's Radiator Springs, Dad." Leslie's voice filtered through the noise and steam of the wash stall.

"Sounds like some little podunk town to me," snorted Theresa.  
"What was he thinking? Who'd wanna live there?"

"Some people prefer a slower life," Buck tried to explain it diplomatically. "then again, they may not have much of a choice anyway. Just remember that your own mother came from such a small town in the southwest, before we met in the Army. Don't knock it."

Theresa recognized the beginnings of that "DON'T-GO-THERE" tone in her father's voice and let it drop at that point. Turning about, she fixed her gaze on the solarium at the back of the house, where the comings and goings of the family's neighbors were visible through the screen of potted plants that Leslie liked to keep. Stratos city was a community directly adjacent to the local airport, planned with airplanes and helicopters in mind, although the ground crew, security and emergency vehicles also had homes there. It was situated about twenty miles from Salt Lake City and boasted a higher-than-average percentage of aircraft residents, not unlike the aviation havens of Oshkosh and Reno. Cars were not unwelcome, but they could not escape the distinct sense of being in another people's territory and generally did not linger. Buck rather liked it that way. Not even his boss, Tex, would lightly intrude on this place.

After checking the weather and NOTAMs from the airport office on the home computer network, Buck ventured onto the tarmac apron directly in front, looking at the sky and sniffing the air. Helicopters, of all vehicle-kind, are known to have a superior sense of smell. The wind spoke to him of the whereabouts of various and sundry small animals, including the smalltracks that occasionally invaded their garbage. When the girls were small, they had loved to watch from a distance as the ironelk occasionally made their way through back yards to nibble at the cedars, much to the chagrin of some residents. Today they were invisible to Buck's eyes, but ever-present in his nostrils; he did not doubt that he could find them if he really wanted to. It was not for nothing that helicopters made some of the best wilderness guides.

He spread his rotor blades now, shaking them out to their full scope. In his own way, Buck was every bit the impressive creature that an ironelk was, hence his nickname. He paused on the tarmac, warily eyeing a band of clouds in the northeastern sky before determining that they would not expand too quickly. The wind was coming out of the northwest at 10mph, not too bad. As Buck was making his final reckonings, Leslie came out through their home's huge sliding doors and pulled up beside him. She also scented the air, and muttered something about the wheelchucks dwelling under the equipment shed in back. "Something must've scared them during the night. Steelteeth again?"

"I suppose..." Buck replied, a little absently. Then, he turned to regard his older daughter. It was uncanny how much she resembled Janice, more so each day. He gave her an affectionate nudge and managed a smile. "Good luck on your test. I just hadn't expected it to come up so soon, even though you skipped a grade and I should 've seen that coming."

Leslie returned a smile. "Thanks, Dad. Gotta run now." With that, she proceeded out to the heliport that lay in the cul-de-sac within the circle of houses in their court, warmed up with a whine of powerful turbines, and lifted off. She had ambitions – university, surveying school, and then a career as a survey engineer. And she wanted to do it on her own. If she achieved a good SAT score, scholarships could be in the offing.

The other daughter, Theresa, brooded from the doorway of the house. Buck hesitated to leave her alone even now, but their neighbor, a retired fighter/bomber, had volunteered to watch Theresa and the house in his absence, and the girl wasn't foolish enough to give an Aardvark any trouble. It was 7:30. Time to go.

Where his daughter was finesse, Buck was all power as he leaped into the sky and turned westward. He could see his shadow on the belt of trees below him, and for a split second, imagined there were two.

_Janice..._


End file.
